Results tagged “wikileaks.de” from WikiLeak

It is depressing to read this WikiLeakS.org press release about the futile censorship of the WikiLeakS.DE domain name alias "cover name", which simply points to the WikiLeakS.org servers, which are not in Germany, but in Sweden.

On April 9th 2009, the internet domain registration for the investigative journalism site Wikileaks.de was suspended without notice by Germany's registration authority DENIC.

The action comes two weeks after the house of the German WikiLeaks domain sponsor, Theodor Reppe, was searched by German authorities. Police documentation shows that the March 24, 2009 raid was triggered by WikiLeaks' publication of Australia's proposed secret internet censorship list. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) told Australian journalists that they did not request the intervention of the German government.

The publication of the Australian list exposed the blacklisting of many harmless or political sites and changed the nature of the censorship debate in Australia. The Australian government's mandatory internet censorship proposal is now not expected to pass the Australian senate.

On March 25 the German cabinet finalized its own proposal to introduce a nation-wide internet censorship system. Australia and Germany are the only Western democracies publicly considering such a mandatory censorship scheme.

While last week German police claimed to the news magazine Der Spiegel that they had been ignorant about WikiLeaks' role as an international press organization, this "excuse" is surely no longer valid. Despite being questioned by the press, German authorities have still not contacted WikiLeaks or its publishers to resolve the issue, or indeed, at all. The lack of contact is inexcusable.

[...]

WikiLeaks continues publishing on its other (non-German) domains. If the German cabinet's censorship proposal passes the Bundestag, presumably those WikiLeaks domains would be added to Germany's secret blacklist.

Germany and China are now the only two countries currently censoring a WikiLeaks domain.

[...]

What are the German authorities playing at ? Even the Australians are denying that they requested such censorship.

Who exactly is the petty official who ordered this censorship ?

This censorship probably breaches the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 10, which is enacted into the domestic law if each European Union country, and in some other ones as well.

It probably also breaches the European Union European Council Electronic Commerce Directive, which, very sensibly, exempts telecommunications and internet infrastructure providers from civil or criminal liability for the sins of their customers.

The assumption being made is that this raid has something to do with the recent publication of Australian or Thai or other countries alleged internet censorship lists, which although they mostly contain links to porn websites, are also being perverted for political censorship purposes as well.

However, since WikiLeakS.org are saying that they were not actually contacted about the raid, it may perhaps also have something to do with the legal dispute between WikiLeakS.org and the German Federal Foreign Intelligence Service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND)

Alternatively, the German Police in Jena and Dresden could just be inept and ignorant of the fact that the actual WikiLeakS.org web servers are physically, logically and legally in Sweden, not in Germany.

We hope that people rally to support Theodor Reppe, since he also runs the high bandwidth https://morphium.info anonymising web proxy server and the morphiumPherrex Tor Exit node and Directory server (91.143.81.107 pherrex.tor.morphium.info), which you may have used knowingly or, more likely, unknowingly, to help to protect your own privacy and security.

Both of these systems are still currently in operation, but some people will now no longer trust them, as they may have been contaminated by the Police, although, for, say a Chinese dissident trying to access the censored BBC Chinese language news website in the UK, that should not make much difference.

The wikileaks.DE domain name (which resolves to IP address 88.80.6.179) is still currently pointing to a webserver at the same Swedish co-hosting facility (PRQ.net) as the main wikileaks.org website (88.80.13.160), but this is on a different subnet.

We hope that the WikiLeakS.org legal team provides Theodor Reppe with all the necessary legal support and media publicity in Germany - he deserves at least as much of their support as any whistleblower does.

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About this blog

This blog here at WikiLeak.org (no "S") discusses the ethical and technical issues raised by the WikiLeakS.org project, which is trying to be a resource for whistleblower leaks, by providing "untraceable mass document leaking and analysis".

These are bold and controversial aims and claims, with both pros and cons, especially for something which crosses international boundaries and legal jurisdictions.

This blog is not part of the WikiLeakS.org project, and there really are no copies of leaked documents or files being mirrored here.

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Please feel free to email us your views about this website or news about the issues it tries to comment on:

LeakDirectory.org

Now that the WikiLeakS.org project is defunct, so far as new whistleblower are concerned, what are the alternatives ?

The LeakDirectory.org wiki page lists links and anonymity analyses of some of the many post-wikileaks projects.

There are also links to better funded "official" whistlblowing crime or national security reporting tip off websites or mainstream media websites. These should, in theory, be even better at protecting the anonymity and security of their informants, than wikileaks, but that is not always so.

New whistleblower website operators or new potential whistleblowers should carefully evaluate the best techniques (or common mistakes) from around the world and make their personal risk assessments accordingly.

Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers and Political Dissidents

The WikiLeakS.org Submissions web page provides some methods for sending them leaked documents, with varying degrees of anonymity and security. Anybody planning to do this for real, should also read some of the other guides and advice to political activists and dissidents:

Please take the appropriate precautions if you are planning to blow the whistle on shadowy and powerful people in Government or commerce, and their dubious policies. The mainstream media and bloggers also need to take simple precautions to help preserve the anonymity of their sources e.g. see Spy Blog's Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers - or use this easier to remember link: http://ht4w.co.uk

WikiLeakS Twitter feeds

The WikiLeakS.org website does not stay online all of the time, especially when there is a surge of traffic caused by mainstream media coverage of a particularly newsworthy leak.

Recently, they have been using their new Twitter feeds, to selectively publicise leaked documents to the media, and also to report on the status of routing or traffic congestion problems affecting the main website in Stockholm, Sweden.

N.B.the words "security" or "anonymity" and "Twitter" are mutually exclusive:

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FreeFarid.com - Kafkaesque extradition of Farid Hilali under the European Arrest Warrant to Spain

Parliament Protest blog - resistance to the Designated Area restricting peaceful demonstrations or lobbying in the vicinity of Parliament.

The Big Opt Out Campaign - opt out of having your NHS Care Record medical records and personal details stored insecurely on a massive national centralised database.

Tor - the onion routing network - "Tor aims to defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers called onion routers, protecting you from websites that build profiles of your interests, local eavesdroppers that read your data or learn what sites you visit, and even the onion routers themselves."

Home Office Watch blog, "a single repository of all the shambolic errors and mistakes made by the British Home Office compiled from Parliamentary Questions, news reports, and tip-offs by the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs team."